Blog Posts

Announcing the New Business Analytics Conference

September 17, 2014

(Dear reader – PASS just announced a few changes to BAC 2015. The strangely-worded announcement is already causing a hubbub on Twitter, and I thought, “There’s gotta be a way to say this stuff clearly and positively.” So I’m taking a shot at it – here goes. Keep in mind that I have nothing to do with the BAC, I’ve never attended it, and I don’t even know why they’re doing this stuff. I’m making this up as I go.) Our annual PASS Summit is an incredible, mature event for data professionals. Every year, we’re lucky enough to get thousands of…

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How I Vote for #SQLPASS Board of Directors Members

September 17, 2014

#passvotes, pass, sqlpass

tl;dr – I’m voting for Grant, James, and Wendy. There are 3 open spots, and 4 people running. This means you have to pick one person who won’t get in. I’m a data guy, so I made a spreadsheet of what’s important to me: PASS Board of Directors Candidates When I elect somebody to a volunteer position, I want to know what they accomplish. Ideally, they blog and tweet about what they’re doing, but I understand that not everybody likes to communicate that way. Just in case, I also read the PASS Board of Directors meeting minutes looking for what they’ve…

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The Real Problem with Relational Databases

September 16, 2014

nosql, performance tuning, SQL Server

They’ve become too easy. It’s too easy to just dump any kind of data in there. It’s too easy to query the database rather than cache data for a period of time in the app. It’s too easy to join all the tables together rather than pick just the tables you need. It’s too easy to write spectacularly, horrifically bad queries. It’s too easy to copy/paste bad designs from the web that have gradually gained good SEO over time. It’s too easy to install them and go live on really crappy hardware. It’s too easy to scale for the first couple…

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Pop Quiz: What Do These Things Cost?

September 9, 2014

consulting, performance tuning, SQL Server

The Price is Right Arrange this list of things in order based on how much they cost: SQL Server Standard Ed. licensing for four cores SQL Server Enterprise Ed. licensing for one core One typical day of employee time One week of a team’s time (4 people) 64GB of memory 256GB of memory A mirrored pair of 1TB SSDs Without searching the web for prices, put those items in order. Do it on a scratch piece of paper – first estimate how much you think each one costs, then put them in order. How does this impact the way you do performance tuning, and…

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Reading Critically: VMware Virtual SAN Performance with SQL Server

September 3, 2014

vendors, virtualization, vmware

Seriously, I’m not trying to pick on VMware documentation, but lately there’s some odd stuff coming out. Last week it was a really bad book, and today it’s a technical white paper from VMware itself – VMware Virtual SAN Performance with Microsoft SQL Server. It’s an easy read – a 9-page PDF – but here’s the highlights. Think about the white paper’s title for a second: it sounds like it’s going to test how well the storage performs with SQL Server. Virtual SAN – so we’re testing a storage-intensive workload, right? Wrong, because the very first paragraph of the executive…

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When Consultants Should Fire their Client

September 2, 2014

consulting

First off, if you’re one of my clients, rest assured that this story isn’t about you – even if I’ve graciously terminated our relationship at some point in the past. This is an actual true story from a few years ago. When I’m working with a new client, we check backups together first. We all need to be on the same page about how often the backups are performed, whether they’re succeeding or failing, and where they’re being written. It’s not unusual for us to discover problems together. Backup jobs fail, custom scripts miss newly added databases, or mission-critical databases are…

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What I Wish I Knew Sooner as a DBA

August 27, 2014

career, consulting

Mike Walsh asked a few folks for 4 things they wish they’d have known earlier. 1. You have customers, not users or coworkers. Every person you work with today is a potential reference and a customer for you down the road. Treat them with professionalism and respect. 2. Focus on your customers’ pains. Ask them what sucks, and how you can relieve that pain. Your database server won’t give you a raise for decreasing fragmentation. 3. Keep it short and sweet. Typing a lot doesn’t show off your knowledge – it shows that you don’t respect others’ time. Give them the right information…

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Six Sentence Emails that Get Fast Responses

August 26, 2014

career, productivity

Get them while you can. Always assume that the person on the other end gets hundreds of emails per day, and they’ve got 60 seconds free as they walk to their next meeting with their phone in their hand. Your goal is to give them everything they need to understand your request in the first 30 seconds, and use the next 30 seconds to give it to you. Write these six sentences – no more, no less: Say hi like a human being. Explain your connection to them. Explain what you need. Explain why you need it. Give them everything they need…

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The Kardashian Approach to Becoming an IT Celebrity

August 19, 2014

blogging, career, marketing, presenting

So you want to be “Internet Famous” in the IT community, but you don’t want to spend your mornings and weekends slaving away on the work I described in my last post? I’ve got good news – there’s an easier way. Think About Celebrities You “Know” If you’re like me, you watch television, and you’d count some/many/most of the people on TV as celebrities, for various values of celebrity. For example, I was walking down a New Orleans street after dark once and saw Josh Harris, now skipper of the Cornelia Marie, a crab boat on the show Deadliest Catch. He had…

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Wanna Run for #SQLPASS Board? Better Read the Rules.

August 14, 2014

#passvotes, pass, sqlpass

The rules this year are clearer than ever, and that’s awesome. But you’d better actually read them (warning: Word docx), because there’s a few doozies like this one: “All campaigning must promote PASS in a positive manner. Campaigning that breaks the stated rules or brings PASS into disrepute may be challenged by any PASS member.” Keep in mind that you’ll be running against PASS Board of Director members up for re-election. You can’t say anything negative about them or the choices the organization made while they were in office. You probably think what you’re saying is fine, but remember that “any PASS…

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Blog Posts

Hi. I’m Brent.